Vladimir Putin hadn't come for a polite chat. With a stony expression on his face, the Russian president sat at the table long before his guest Angela Merkel did. The gesture made very clear that this was his meeting, and he set the tone for the European Union-Russia summit in Samara on the Volga River last week.

Putin made no effort to smile as he met with Merkel -- who currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency -- and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso on Friday. The two delegations sat opposing each other, a bit like arms-control negotiators during the Cold War, in a pavilion built especially for the summit. The marble floors, tall columns and massive chandelier gave an impression of imperial grandeur that Putin has tried to reclaim for Russia.

The mood was downright frosty as the host and his guests addressed the international press at midday. "I'm a bit concerned that some people had difficulties coming here," Merkel said, causing Putin to press his lips together. That morning, police in Moscow had prevented former world chess champion and Russian opposition politician Garry Kasparov from flying to Samara, where he had hoped to lead a protest.

It was as if a thunderstorm was brewing outside over the Volga. Putin bristled and went on the attack. Hadn't there just been arrests in Germany of protesters planning demonstrations at the G-8 summit next month? Then he asked why the EU had made no protest after a Russian demonstrator died in front of the Estonian police. The man was protesting against the relocation of a statue commemorating the Soviet Union's fight against Nazi Germany.

Putin is no longer the same leader who addressed the German parliament in September 2001. Back then he swore to follow "the spirit of freedom and humanism" while pursuing friendship with Europe. "Russia has always had special feelings for Germany," he said at the time.

But Putin in 2007 personifies Russia's imperial drive for greater power. The country wants to play a leading global role, and Putin has consciously chosen to ditch his soothing words and conciliatory gestures to show his true nature as an uncompromising advocate for Russian interests.

He's learned to use the country's massive energy supplies as a political weapon. He also tries to divide the EU whenever possible. Former communist states like Poland, Lithuania and Estonia are put under pressure with trade sanctions, while important energy customers such as Germany and Hungary are coddled and catered to.

Merkel faced a Russian president at the EU-Russia summit who was pushing his own interests. He repeatedly referred to the widespread chaos underneath his predecessor Boris Yeltsin and the order he has been able to restore, while talking with the chancellor.

He then went on to describe what Moscow sees as Western hypocrisy. He said he did not order Kasparov to be kept away from the summit. But the police sometimes do things without informing the government. That's one thing that must be clear to the chancellor, Putin said with a smile. He also asked Merkel why he should bother talking to the Americans at all. They might say they want dialogue with Russia, but in the end they act unilaterally -- as seen in the plans for an American missile-defense shield, which will stretch to Russia's borders, or in Kosovo, where Washington is pushing for independence from Serbia (an old Russian friend). Merkel only said it was worth keeping open the lines of communication.

'Russia is Not a Model Democracy'

As the German government's plane left Samara in the early afternoon, the chancellor could barely conceal her frustration. What mattered was that both sides had discussed their different positions, she said. By this logic, holding talks at all was an achievement. Each attack by Putin would therefore be proof that a relationship with Europe is working -- or that a relationship even exists.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was also on the plane, put a similar spin on the situation. He spoke of long-term considerations. The current spat, he said, would prove to be a harmless little episode. But there was also the chance that Germany's current EU presidency would go down in history as the start of a new ice age in Europe.

A More Privileged Partnership?

While Putin forges ahead with his new foreign policy more or less unopposed, Russian critics and Russian proponents in Europe are fighting a bitter battle over how best to engage the great power to the east. The Germans, who have tried to forge special ties with Moscow since Otto von Bismarck was chancellor, are coming in for particular scrutiny.

"Germany is hostage to its ambition of wanting to have a more privileged partnership with Russia than with other EU states," criticized Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, the Polish chairman of the foreign relations committee of the European Parliament, last Friday.

The divide, however, is not just throughout Europe, it's also present within Germany's grand coalition of conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and center-left Social Democrats (SPD). As former chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) assiduously praises the "stability and dependability" of the Putin regime, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the foreign policy point man for the CDU's Bavarian sister party the CSU, sees nothing but danger: "The so-called 'new Ostpolitik' of the Foreign Ministry is a chimera."

SPD parliamentary floor leader Peter Struck angers his own coalition partners when he recommends remaining equidistant between Russia and the United States: "We have to have the same distance between us and America on the one side and Russia on the other side."

And Martin Schulz, an SPD member of the European Parliament, even suggests that Washington is to blame for the growing tensions with Moscow: "The question is whether the confrontational course of the United States against Russia isn't a reaction to a possible rapprochement with the EU."

In Merkel's cabinet, the proponents of the two conflicting approaches toward Russia have shown restraint. But that doesn't mean she agrees with her own minister responsible for this key question of German foreign policy. Merkel is a Christian Democrat who grew up in East Germany, under a regime she held at a distance, and she shares the mistrust of Russia displayed by many of her EU colleagues in the former Eastern Bloc.

Merkel wants no "equidistance" between Moscow and Washington, and she has no time for the backslapping friendship that Putin maintained with Schröder. But her current foreign minister, Steinmeier, was Schröder's chief of staff; he sees Berlin's ties to Russia in the context of the previous administration. He doesn't go along with Schröder's total faith in Putin -- "Russia is not a model democracy," says Steinmeier -- but he does believe Schröder's closeness to Moscow formed part of the current foundation of German foreign policy.

A German Foreign Ministry policy paper titled "Rapprochement through Engagement" recommends pursuing a line that would "irreversibly" tie the EU and Russia together -- including even joint military operations and, ultimately, a free trade zone from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But this paper seems dated now; even pro-Russian members of the German government fear their policy of cooperation could fail.

"The situation has changed," says Steinmeier.

Overestimating the EU

One problem is that Moscow doesn't want to accept NATO's spread to countries that once belonged to the Warsaw Pact. Moscow simply has yet to come to terms with its demotion from superpower status. But it's also a matter of geopolitics: Putin and his generals believe the American anti-missile system will deploy close to Russia for strategic reasons -- to spy on the vast country, and to incorporate the two Eastern European countries (Poland and the Czech Republic, which will both host elements of the missile shield) more closely into the US military's strategy.

And Ukraine, a 47-million-strong former Soviet state, is the biggest prize in the new round of geopolitical wrangling. Washington supported the so-called Orange Revolution that brought the pro-American President Viktor Yushchenko into power. US President George W. Bush sent hundreds of advisors and spent millions. Yushchenko even wants to lead Ukraine into the EU and NATO, which would be a nightmare for Putin and his administration.

Along Russia's southern border, where the country's soft underbelly has been made vulnerable by war in Chechnya, Putin has been forced to watch as the tiny nation of Georgia upgrades its army with American help. The strongly pro-American Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is as annoying to Putin as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is to Bush. He's a gadfly in Moscow's own backyard.

And in the gas- and oil-rich region between Russia and China, both America and Europe are trying to free Central Asia from Moscow's grip by building pipelines that avoid Russian soil. But so far with only limited success: Two weeks ago, Putin cajoled Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan into a new pipeline deal worth €700 million ($946 million), which will bring natural gas along the Caspian Sea coast to Russia.

It was a powerful blow against EU efforts to gain a foothold in Central Asia. The new project will cost the EU-supported Nabucco pipeline -- meant to deliver gas across Turkey to southeastern Europe -- one of the most important potential suppliers, as Turkmenistan cooperates with Moscow.

That spells the end for Steinmeier's goal of greater EU engagement with Russia while getting involved in Moscow's sphere of influence in Central Asia -- at least for the time being.

Steinmeier's Russian strategy is, after all, based on an overestimation of the EU's geopolitical possibilities. The signing of a new partnership agreement between Russia and the EU remains on hold, and energy supplies -- for decades the vital link between Moscow and Western Europe -- have become a growing point of contention.

Now Steinmeier is trying to salvage what he can. Ahead of the summit in Samara he flew to Moscow for a three-hour talk with a passage from Putin's speech to German MPs in September 2001 in hand. "Regarding European integration, we don't simply support this process, but rather see it with hope," Putin said at the time.

The foreign minister wanted to see whether the Russian president still stood by those sentiments. Putin tried to assure him that, of course, he did. Steinmeier wasn't present in the German Bundestag that day when Putin made his speech, but Merkel was. She sat in the second row, determined not to be impressed by the words of a former Soviet spy.

As parliament rose at the end of Putin's speech to applaud, she walked out through the rows of conservative legislators and let out a bit of biting sarcasm. One lawmaker still remembers how she hissed: "Thanks to the KGB."

Ralf Beste, Konstantin von Hammerstein, Ralf Neukirch, Matthias Schepp